I just realized that we now know where the throne room sits relative to everything else in Spacerock! Panels 1 and 11 place it pretty unambigiously relative to the Atrium, which can probably be correlated with earlier pages (I lack sufficient Internets to do so) to locate it relative to the tower and everything else.

His Duty to Stanley will force him to break away from being Stanley's loyal unit? Wait, what? You realize that the Overlord of another side owes Stanley nothing at all, right?

Unless a new Side is formed, every GK unit in the hex is doomed to croak. Parson and Antium would croak in the inferno, and the red dwagons would be croaked either by the RCC2 during the remainder of their turn or by Charlie during his turn (as a mercenary mission billed to the RCC2).

I think I can show that if Parson were to form a new Side and be totally selfish, there would be some benefit to GK (well, to be precise, to Wanda's Side) that is an improvement over the above scenario, particularly since Parson has a personal interest in seeing Jack decrypted.

There is no way for Parson to found a new Side at Spacerock and maintain control of Spacerock. The only person who can save the city from burning down is Sizemore, and the only person would could potentially enable the city to be defended until the end of the RCC2's turn is Wanda.

I don't think we know whether Antium and the dwagons would automatically turn to the new Side. If they wouldn't, then Parson would be forced to negotiate an alliance in a Mexican standoff. (It's a standoff even though Antium & dwagons could easily croak Parson or hold him off without croaking him, because given Maggie's lack of juice and the negotiation in the MK, only Parson can ask Sizemore and Wanda to come in through the portal. Antium probably doesn't even known about the option of grabbing Parson's eyebook and impersonating him, while keeping Parson alive and uncaptured so that the portal remains open.)

Even if Antium and the dwagons would become Parson's units, if Wanda comes in, the units she can decrypt would easily overwhelm them all.

If Parson wants to remain alive and independent, he must escape to the MK. Overlord Parson + Wanda + many corpses = decrypted Parson. Spacerock without Wanda = RCC2 re-capture of Spacerock before the end of the RCC2 turn.

Given the above, what GK has to gain in the situation is at least the decryption of Jack, since Parson would carry his body into MK just as a friend. If GK wishes to take the risk of sending Sizemore and Wanda into Spacerock after making a deal with Parson, then GK would also get to decrypt Ace and bring him back to GK. GK would also force the RCC2 to expend resources re-taking Spacerock from its decrypted defenders, and if those defenders last until GK's turn, then some of them would have a chance of escaping back to GK territory. Razing Spacerock is another option.

However, I do concede that GK Parson might consider it dangerous to GK for a barbarian Parson to exist, because Wanda could be tempted to turn to whatever Side he ends up in, especially if it's Charlescomm.

Funny thought: If Parson is creative enough, his Duty might compel him to have Antium tie him up before he founds the new Side. Then he wouldn't be able to escape to the MK.

I just realized that we now know where the throne room sits relative to everything else in Spacerock! Panels 1 and 11 place it pretty unambigiously relative to the Atrium, which can probably be correlated with earlier pages (I lack sufficient Internets to do so) to locate it relative to the tower and everything else.

A quick browse yields that Page 16 shows most of the area in which the atrium, tower, throne room, and (I assume) dungeon reside.

Regarding Parson founding a new side: Stanley will either be for or against it, and it will all depend on how it's spun to him.

If the folks involved are smart, they will remind him that the summoning spell binds Parson to him *forever* - and what could be more awesome than having the Perfect Warlord, acting as an independent ruler but still required to obey you, in a permanent alliance with GK, and placed in the appropriate position so that they will serve as a buffer zone between you and everyone who wants to kill you?

Charlie can spin it so that Stanley will not object at all, unless Wanda decrypts him. Charlie already knows how many Archons it would take to conquer GK's airspace. Right now, GK has even less defending the air space until Stanley can get airborne and bring the Hammer into play. If they blitz the place, they can conquer the airspace and garrison long before Stanley can get to where he can defend the capitol. Book 1 depicted him as choosing to bail out rather than stand and fight. And Charlie has a rule for when the opponent chooses to run.

There's just too much going against GK right now. Charlie bit hard at the bait of the Hammer in Book 1, and now the Hammer is pretty much in the open for the taking. No casters, no Perfect Warlord with a mathemancy bracer, no massive amounts of dwagons, no decrypted or uncroaked army, no lateral thinking to save his boop.. just one arrogant little man who only has a dim awareness of the power he wields, a handful of the weaker dwagons, and a pack of hobgobwins.

If Stanley allows Parson to remain a vassal Overlord in Spacerock (or if Parson otherwise becomes unavailable for consultation), a team consisting of the decrypted, upkeep-free duo of Ace and Jack (blackjack) could take up Parson's previous role at GK as war planners without command or field responsibilities - especially if they can no longer cast. They could also encipher and decipher eyebook communications with Parson.

Another use for non-casting casters could be as batteries in a link-up. Decrypted archons clearly still get juice.

Infantry can be promoted to warlord. Non-caster Jack could provide bonuses if promoted.

I'm pretty sure casters cannot be promoted to warlord. Else a frontline caster like Wanda would already be a warlord. I doubt uncroaked units can even be promoted, so the conversion to an infantry unit wouldn't help anything. As to decryption, lesser casters like Archons can still cast, so I'd say it is quite likely decrypted casters can in fact cast.

Uncroaked warlords do exist, and Jack wouldn't be a caster in that hypothetical situation.

All known uncroaked warlords were warlords before they croaked, not promoted afterwards. And the reason Jack would be an infantry unit instead of a caster in that hypothetical situation is probably because his abilities would have been damaged and reduced, not because of some sort of magical unit conversion. He'd be the wrong kind of infantry.

Changing Jack into a true warlord would require some sort of magic that specifically changes the very nature of his being to that state. I don't think Croakamancy works quite that way.

That's not what that page says. It says the spell will end Parson's existence if he disobeys an order. But we don't know whether the spell would even react if he turned to a new side or founded his own. To put it another way: we know it enforces Obedience, but we don't know whether it enforces Loyalty.

My own crazy and clearly incorrect predictions are as follows: The Dupe King is still alive, but gets croaked by Parson, and the collapse killed all other enemies in the garrison. Parson winds up as chief warlord of a new side under Overlady Wanda. Jack is still alive, because he never did come through the portal. The dead "Jack" we see is the product of a Foolamancer-Croakamancer linkup via Maggie, which allowed Jack to remote control a Decrypted infantry unit. The doll Parson just bisected will be partly reanimated, without its legs, by a Decrypted Ace. Fake-Jack chose the purple dwagon instead of that red one because he saw that the red is actually Lady Sylvia in disguise.

That's the precise reason I thought that Ossomer would survive somewhat longer than he did and do something more dramatic before croaking. I was obviously wrong.

Ossomer's death scene occurs after many scenes of inner turmoil resulting in being the first to break Wanda's hold and choosing to switch sides. How is that not dramatic?

Ossomer's LIFE was dramatic. His death was not. His story was essentially done when he turned back to Spacerock. Traditionally, you'd expect him to save someone else, or down a fierce enemy warlord or dwagon, or lead some countereffort before dying. Instead, all he did was shoot a couple of blasts, then get yanked off his mount and faceplanted to death without even a chance at a defiant cry or last swing. In retrospect, I like that. People die and it sucks. Drama and nobility are made up after the fact, mostly by people who weren't there.

Ossomer's death would be practically a footnote, except for one thing: Thanks to his and other deaths, most or all of Gobwin Knob is unaware that Decrypted can turn. I don't know that Wanda has any special connection to Decrypted who aren't in her hex, though I suspect not. Stanley's mind was on other things when Ossomer croaked, and he isn't the type to think about it later. The only surviving GK Archon is now a prisoner.

Yes, but why would Stanley do something like that, to change a perfectly servicable and highly fortified capital to a burning ruin? Not to rescue a single caster whose name he can barely remember on his best days. And certainly not when it means that -he- has to travel to said burning ruin and back to move the capital back to where it belongs.

Well, Stanley has indicated that he does feel that Jack saved his life, and he does seem to actually remember that debt (he said as much when Wanda suggested croaking and decrypting Jack.) Whether it would be enough to make him do something so extreme is another story, but he does know who Jack is now, and is as positively-inclined towards him as he is towards anyone else.

He could be persuaded to do it for that reason if it were presented in addition to uncroaking the high-value targets in the city (including possibly two Jetstone casters.)

He wouldn't be able to get there through the MK, no; he'd have to use a dwagon relay, once that's set up again. But it's not actually as huge a deal as it seems at first. Once Jetstone is beaten, he'll be able to afford a few turns, and they have a lot of money (if changing capitals requires money.) Plus, honestly? Stanley is bored. He'd probably love the excuse to get out of the capital and take a look at the new places that have been conquered in his name.

I don't think it'll actually happen, mind, for other reasons (I mentioned what I think will actually happen.) But it could.

Because I don't think anyone has mentioned this in relation to Jack's allegedly stupid maneuver.

- "Understands and obeys orders" =/= "Plants every toe in accordance with what the commanding unit would want done if it had time to think about it." The dwagons don't come with frigging joysticks. They obey orders. They make conscious and instinctive decisions with their probably quite tiny brains. Jack ordered it to charge in while breathing, and it did so. That it didn't stop precisely where he would have wished had he been a predictamancer or a dirtamancer is neither its fault nor his.

- "I'm no dirtamancer, but..." That alone should suffice, really. Almost everyone on Erf is a specialist. Even people who are interested in things outside their specialty are almost always terrible at them.

Try this: "I'm no mechanic, but... I'm alone in a garage and my car needs a tuneup and underbody inspection." Now imagine how that scenario will probably turn out.

He could be persuaded to do it for that reason if it were presented in addition to uncroaking the high-value targets in the city (including possibly two Jetstone casters.)

Two casters? I thought only Ace was left. If they go for two, they may as well go for four. An airborne strike against the column marching away from Spacerock could target the leadership, wiping out Tramennis, Pierce, and Lloyd. They just wait for the incapacitated Cubbins to fly straight into the slaughter. That's a very vulnerable convoy if you can avoid the main column. There may be some archery left, but most have spent their ammo, and just how much damage could they possible muster? We've seen what a stack of dwagons can do to a stack in Book 1, and Jetstone no longer has an insane leadership bonus stacked with an artifact bonus.

End of this turn and the start of the next will be the keys to this battle. Neither GK nor Jetstone are in a position for another sustained conflict. Parson will be vulnerable until reinforcements can be acquired. Tramennis will be vulnerable until his entire column can get to their destination. Cubbins will lose that replicated backpack at the start of next turn. If Parson pressed the issue, he might be able to take the remaining dwagons, abandon Spacerock, and launch a counter attack against just the airborn casters and leadership. He might have enough move to reach them, and if his turn starts before Jetstone's, he may be able to catch them as they are breaking camp. It'd be a gamble that would leave him in the middle of nowhere, and he'd be relying on the attack group doing what they do without him being there (unless he can weasel his way around the Heavy unit on a flying mount restriction), but he could wipe out Jetstone.

I haven't really posted in this forum, although I have been following the comic since Day 1. As many have pointed out, this latest page has made a lot of lurkers come out and post their opinions.

This has got to be, in my opinion, the worst page in the history of the comic. For a lot of reasons. From the entirely anti-climatic demise of Jack, to the overly used doll references in the Parson vs Molly fight (seriously, 2-3 should have been enough, but there are like 10 of them in the last 2 pages). It seems as if the characters are making bad decision after bad decision just in order to advance the plot in the direction that Rob wants it to. It's just poor storytelling in my opinion.

Overall, the comic is just starting to rub me the wrong way lately. From the late updates, to the art style.I've not been a huge fan of Xin's style, I much prefer the old style of Jaimie, but I could usually look past that. In the last pages however I find myself not only disliking the story but the art as well.This is just my preference, it doesn't mean that Xin's art is not good, but that everything about the comic has been a downward spiral since parson entered the MK.

_________________Those who mess with the Dark Bull of Gael'Thoth shall be pierced by their blackhorns.

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